


Grin and Bare It

by 3amepiphany



Series: YOI Fic-A-Thon 2018 [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Multi, and yuri agrees with him, jj is right for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 05:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16509824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amepiphany/pseuds/3amepiphany
Summary: Sometimes your friends sing at the table for you in public on your birthday, and sometimes they take you to a haunted house. You do what you gotta do.





	Grin and Bare It

**Author's Note:**

> This is late and I'm a loser, but Happy Halloween, and Happy Birthday to Otabek Altin. <3

Together they pooled the last of their tickets so everyone could go inside - the party maximum was eight and everyone figured this would be the most fun way to end the evening at the Halloween fun fair before getting in a late birthday dinner for Otabek. Well, everyone except J.J. But in that, he loudly proclaimed that “Otabek would disagree.”

Yuri bristled almost instantly at this, but it was Isabella who asked, “What do you mean by that?”

Otabek waited patiently for the answer, not really making a move to keep Yuri contained were he to let loose in an outburst but also really curious himself and letting that be read openly.

“He is the worst person to take through a haunted house.”

Almost as if on queue, everyone turned to look at Leo, who shrugged and said, “In a way he’s right.”

“That’s mean, both of you,” Victor tried to say without laughing and nearly failing that. Yuuri shrugged and said that even if it were boring he’d rather do this one than the other adult-targeted ‘Helsinki After Dark’ haunted house that Guang-Hong had found.

“I can’t argue, but it’s not that I’m going to be bored,” Otabek said. “Nor is it that I don’t want to be scared on my birthday, that comes with the date. It’s like everyone at the table singing to you - you just gotta grin and bear it. But these things do scare me pretty well, I won’t lie.”

Yuri looked at Guang-Hong, who shrugged.

In they went, filing through the ticket takers’ line with a chorus of “kiitos” and “thank-yous”, and they were ushered into the foyer of the spooky looking building with its disheveled siding and broken window panes, and loose cobwebs blowing in the cold, autumn wind. It smelled musty and still sort of like the fair food stalls that they had passed outside, and the lighting was very, very dim. And it really wasn’t much of a foyer, either, it just seemed like a tiny room with some old wallpaper peeling from the ceiling and in spots along the walls, and the single, gently glowing light bulb on a wire hanging above them. There was enough room for all of them to shuffle about and they all shared some glances of excited anticipation before the door closed behind them, and it was quiet. Suddenly, Yuuri made a soft, scared sort of sound as he turned back around to face the entrance they had just come through. Victor made one in response, mostly because he wasn’t expecting such a noise from Yuuri.

“Here, look,” the Japanese skater said with some hesitation, and he pointed at some writing on the wall that said, ‘This way’ and an arrow, pointing at the wall. Not really a way they could go.

“Is that blood?” J.J. asked. “That looks like blood.”

At that instant, the light flickered and went out, darkness spilling about them like ink, and several of them - no one could really tell who - screamed.

But then there was a light, shining onto the floor. “I got it, hold on.” It was Otabek, and he was gripping his phone in one hand and Yuri’s wrist in the other, as Yuri was very literally trying to crawl inside Otabek’s jacket with him and it was not going to make going through this house any easier for either of them - even if he were successful at it. 

“Oh, already,” complained J.J. over Leo’s laughter and reminder not to yell at the birthday boy, and Otabek quickly apologized and put his phone away. But then the lights in the little room flickered back on and the wall that was previously there moments before… now was not. They peered into the new doorway and saw a hallway of sorts, full of windows to their left that they didn’t recall seeing on the outside of the building. These had a beautiful and very enticing amount of “moonlight” shining through them and their many broken panes, and there certainly was a breeze moving through the hall as well that made the gauzy, torn and worried curtains hanging about them billow and dance. Being the closest to the doorway, Guang-Hong took the first few steps in. Yuuri followed, with Victor grasping at his jacket to catch up with him and keep him close. There were bloodied arrows along the floor.

They took a moment to just walk through it slowly, but hugging the wall sort of as looking at the scenery painted on the other side of the faux windows, little red lights started appearing, fading in and out in sets of two from the dark faux trees and bushes. “J.J.,” Isabella murmured, slowing down to stare at this, “I had a bad dream like this once.”

“Hold my hand, my love, it’s okay.”

There were a few beats of silence before the both of them realized that they weren’t holding each other’s hands, but instead a pair of hands that were seemingly reaching out from the wall. Ahead of them, Guang-Hong gave a short screech as one grabbed at his arm, and Victor ushered both him and Yuuri through the doorway at the end of the hall quickly, yelling as the three of them disappeared.

At the end of the group, Leo and Yuri danced away from the hands sticking through the random holes in the “dilapidated” wall and watched as Otabek passed out awkward high-fives and a very awkward handshake as he followed a screaming J.J. and Isabella out of the hallway.

Yuri gave Leo a shocked look.

“We told you.”

“Does he just not scare easily?”

“Oh, he’s probably terrified. But it’s like. It doesn’t translate into screaming and jumping for him? He just. He does this.”

There was a scream in the next room, so they followed. A hand grabbed at Yuri on his way out and he sprinted away like a scared cat, hoping he wasn’t walking into another immediate jumpscare. And it wasn’t, but it still looked like a bad time. Another bloodied message on the wall, this time it read “HELP ME”, but a few feet past it, it had another, messy and hastily drawn arrow and the message “IN HERE”; the room was a nice resting spot for them to convene and compose themselves for the next room and figure out who would go through first this time. Isabella insisted on hanging back so she could see what was coming her way and anticipate it, and she wasn’t letting J.J. go at all; they were clutching each others’ hands tightly because of the lesson they had both just learned.

From the next room was an eerie cry, beckoning them, but it wasn’t in any language any of them understood. Certainly not Finnish, either. There was also a loud rattling noise. Like bones clattering.

Leo took the lead after a moment of hesitation from everyone, and he walked into the room, followed by Otabek and Yuri and the others. A trashed and thrashed family room, there was a flickering television in a corner, and a bunch of destroyed furniture… and piles of bones that looked slick with blood and bits that indeed would rattle and move, almost as if there things crawling around within them. “Rats,” offered J.J., and Victor whined about how terrible that was to think about. They had to pass by a lopsided couch facing the television to get to the other side of the room where the exit was, and as the group shuffled alongside it, a skeleton popped up from it, sending several of them jumping back against the wall. Yuri and Yuuri stumbled around Otabek to try to get out of the room while he noticed that the skeleton was pointing that direction, and he said “Ok, next room, we can’t help here,” which made Leo laugh again. Yuuri let loose a blood-curdling shriek as a skeleton dropped down from the doorway and hit him just as he was walking through.

Yuri screamed, and then Guang-Hong started wailing, and Isabella started screaming too. Victor and J.J. jumped as a skeleton was pulled across the floor out from of a pile of bones, sliding past their feet between them and the others.

Yuuri untangled himself from the skeleton and headed into the next room and let loose another scream. He backed into the others as they had tried to enter behind him - and he pointed out what he had seen in the worn-down kitchen, grey and bleak and just as vandalized as the living room they were half-stuck in. But there was nothing.

“She.. it. It had a leg - it was eating a leg,” he muttered in strained English. “It hid.”

They all crowded into the kitchen as best as the could and started working their way to the next door, the whole time looking about the room.

“Cabinet,” Yuuri said, and as he did, one of the cabinet doors along the counter and under the filthy-looking sink opened, and then closed again.

They all stood there, quietly, and just as Victor broke away to pull Yuuri and Guang-Hong into the next room, the cabinet door opened again and a pale human in ragged remains of clothing covered in blood and whatever else crawled out and crept about on the floor in a terrifyingly uncanny manner, a bloodied stump of a leg hanging from its mouth by the toes and dragging along with it. It reached for what they all finally realized was a body on the ground under a table, and as it pulled away a fistful of red, shiny and gloppy mess from its torso, the body writhed and moaned. It dropped the foot and shoved this mess into its mouth.

“I can never eat Jello again,” muttered Otabek, and that was when the humanoid creature looked up and straight at them. Its eyes were pitch black and its teeth, covered in whatever it had been eating, was full of pointed teeth as it snarled at them.

They booked it into the next room, which wasn’t so much a room but a corner that seemed to be another resting spot, leading down through another hallway; but as they crammed themselves into this little nook, Isabella, at the end of the party now, started screaming at the top of her lungs hysterically. The creature was crawling towards them from across the kitchen.

She worked her way behind J.J. and he started screaming too as she’d begun to push him back into the room towards it. Everyone started yelling - on the other side of them the walls of the hallway seemed to bow and bend inwards, closing off their way through. The creature reached up as if to grab at J.J.’s scarf and Leo pushed Yuri through the closing walls. “BEKA!” he yelped as he disappeared within the rubbery, almost-bounce-house-like walls. Leo slipped through as well, and then they all did, Victor grabbing J.J. by the jacket and pulling him in behind him while pushing Isabella through in front of him with his other arm. J.J. yelled about it grabbing at his leg and that he thought it was going to pull him back through, but it didn’t, and it didn’t follow them. They all emerged on the other side of this weird hallway to find another dim corner to turn, with more blood on the wall. Just an arrow this time, dripping and smeared and almost hardly an arrow at all.

There wasn’t time to stop now, and they steeled themselves for another darkened hallway, this time one with doors. Closed doors. On either side. And one at the far end, covered in bloody handprints. Along the floor and across the other doors was a gory streak and spatterings of blood as well, as if someone had been dragged through the hall, flinging blood everywhere. Yuri deftly slipped towards the end of the group with Otabek, absolutely making an effort now to hide within his own hoodie and then within the Kazakh’s jacket. From behind one of the doors to his right, there was a sudden scratching sound. He leaped almost a foot straight into the air. A door next to Leo started rattling, whatever was behind it was pounding on the door and twisting the doorknob. J.J. reached for a door in frustration, hoping to open it, but only managing to fight with that doorknob. When he pulled his hands away, it didn’t stop twisting and wiggling - as if whatever was on the other side of it was also frustrated that it could not open the door.

“Locked,” said Otabek, and when a door next to him started doing the same thing he hit it back a couple of times. The pounding stopped. Suddenly it opened inward a crack, and several of them hollered at this before it slammed shut again. “NOT LOCKED,” he said loudly. 

The pounding and rattling and shaking started coming from _all_ of the doors now, and they hustled down to the door at the end of the hallway, trying to get it open but failing, as it was locked too. They and the doors created such a cacophony for a good thirty seconds straight until, abruptly, the hallway settled.

They, too, quieted, and after several seconds of mostly silence - they were breathing and sniffling heavily, all of them - Leo felt the doorknob under his hand shift slightly, as if it was being unlocked from the other side. He pulled away, and the others backed up a few steps as well because of the look of horror on his face, and they all stood there, waiting. It was dead silent. They were all holding their breath now.

The door cracked open, and its hinges squealed as it opened fully into a darkness that none of them wanted to go through.

That’s when they heard someone calling for help.

One by one the doors in the hallway started to creak open as well, starting from the far end, but by the time the third one had opened, the party decided that was a resounding ‘no’ and went through this last door. It shut behind them.

They were in what looked like a garage, and it smelled like the outside. In the dim lights along a workbench on one side, they could see some soft fabric billowing a bit, and there was some relief in knowing that they were likely right upon the exit. But the room was big, and it was dark, and they kept hearing someone moaning and asking them for help. There were also other sounds. Fabric shifting about. Whispers. Yuuri muttering and what sounded like Leo praying in Spanish.

There seemed to be a sort of cordoned walk now: some guide ropes and some boxes stacked alongside them, but it was slowing them down and bottlenecking them in a way not too far off from the hallways they had been going through. And that’s when Otabek saw it among the items jumbled along their path. 

Handlebars.

“There’s a bike here, hold on-”

As he said this, a floodlight turned on across the room, revealing a person on the floor bloodied and in a pool of blood. Around the person stood at least a dozen cloaked beings, who all turned to look at the party as one for just a split second before one of them yelled, “ A FEAST” before they all fell upon the crying person in a horrific, supremely dramatic manner. Catching all of this in just a few split seconds set all of the skaters and Isabella off into a screaming panic. The floodlight flickered several times as if there were a camera going off, and when two of the cloaked beings broke off from the writhing mass to come at them, they all rushed at the fabric “door” that led them out of the vampire-filled garage and back out into the asphalt exit area where other Halloween fair-goers were waiting to see groups leave the haunted house, possibly throw up in one of the trash cans lining the blocked off area, and sit for a short spell while their photos from the last room popped up on the screen for them to review, laugh at, and possibly purchase as a small souvenir, proof that they had survived the walk through.

Guang-Hong, though wiping tears away off his face with his sweater sleeves and chest heaving, had a big smile on his face. He suddenly became a font of joy at being _that_ scared, speaking excitedly in his first language and not at all able to slow down. After some comments on the house itself, he said, “I wish we’d had Phichit with us, he would have had the whole thing on video.”

Leo, red in the face, nodded emphatically in agreement with the Phichit comment. He repeated it for Victor and Yuuri in English, and they too agreed, though their responses were muffled as they were currently trying to bury their faces into one another's’ coats and calm down.

J.J. laid himself out flat on a patch of grass on the other side of the photos booth, complaining loudly about how Isabella was just ready to feed him to that thing in the kitchen. She herself looked utterly shaken and a mess, and complained back at him with a few kicks to his outstretched leg. “I’ve got to carry that to the competition tomorrow, my one greatest fan besides myself, ready to sacrifice me to a bunch of vampires!”

“It sounds like a story Georgi would make up for one of his programs,” Yuri said to Otabek, who was staring at the other photos shuffling up on the display screens at the booth.

“Mm,” was all Otabek said, and it seemed to be in agreement. He pulled Yuri close and finally let him crawl into his jacket, with him. After a few minutes, he laughed.

“What?” Yuri asked him. “Were you bored?”

“No! Not bored. I love them, but haunted houses scare me silly.” He pointed at one of the screens, where a four-up of their photos had appeared. In each one everyone was in varying states of pure terror. Except Otabek. With Yuri basically climbing onto his back and clinging to him through the photos and howling in every one, he had one hand outreached and gripped on the handlebars of the bike that had been in front of them. In the first three photos, his face was distracted, but also unmoved. The last one made it a little easier to see the fear that had ultimately crept in, just in time. “See?”

“J.J. was right and I hate saying that, but also Leo was right, too.”

“I was also right. Not bored. I grinned and bore it. Like vampires do with their teeth,” he said, and buried his face in Yuri’s neck, as if he were going to bite him. For that he got a hit on shoulder and the promise that Yuri would start a loud birthday sing-along at dinner.

As they all reconvened to figure out where they should go eat dinner (though Yuuri said he didn’t think he’d be able to eat after all of that), a group that had been in the house behind them exited the “garage”, screaming and wailing just as they had been.

The guy selling the photos relented to Yuri saying it was Otabek’s birthday, and with a look at his passport to prove it, printed him a sheet for free. Yuri spent most of their dinner afterwards taking pics of it to send to everyone. J.J. posted it to his Instagram, much to everyone’s disappointment and embarrassment.

He’d also “accidentally” tagged the Yuri’s Angels account instead of Yuri himself.


End file.
